BLOOMING IN THE DARKNESS

​In a way this season of quarantine has been a blessing to me.

I am aware a lot of people have lost loved ones and I’m still terrified of this terrible situation every day, but God has helped me be calmed during this storm. Hopefully, you can relate to this and my story can encourage you in some way. 

I have always been close to God: I grew up as a Christian in the Catholic Church and have served him since I was little, but something always kept me away from him and it made me yo-yo in our relationship.

I have been battling depression since I was 14 years old and for a long time it made me very angry that God did not heal me after everything, I had done for Him.

The sleepless nights filled with tears were a cycle I thought I had to get used to and I kinda hated Him for that. I’ve lost friends left and right and it only added more darkness to my depression, as I was always asking myself ‘what is wrong with me?’.
I also had a lot of big dreams that never came to pass, so I blamed him for that as well, along with my parent’s relationship which was not the best. It all added darkness to my depression.

I lost all love I had for myself, and I have never had a boyfriend so that made it worse; it made me hate myself more because I thought it was because I was ugly.

Anyways, the point is those things made me be angry with God. However, I kept serving Him because deep down I knew He loved me and I loved Him, so I kept working and taking retreats and even created a youth group in my church, which I loved.

Then, after hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, I tried to move to the U.S. because I had been offered employment.

When I got there, I realized I not only did I have depression but also separation anxiety. I was unable to eat or sleep and eventually, after just a week, I made the decision to come back home. I felt like a total failure. Depression got pretty serious after that but slowly I started to go back to who I used to be, stronger than before of course.

Fast forward to 2020, this terrible pandemic hit the world and we were forced to stay at home.

Surprisingly, now that I didn’t have to get up early to go to work or do much during the day, I could not sleep at all. I would wake up a lot during the night,  so one day I decided to stay up and talk to God because my mom had told me that not being able to sleep sometimes meant that “God wanted me to pray”. I just told him random things and we ended up discussing what my purpose was, which I’m still trying to figure out.

I am a teacher, so I love to talk to people in an educational way, especially teens. I created a Movement about how the music of BTS teaches self-love and I’ve done a few workshops that I am very proud of, but something was still missing.

I have always served God and I feel the safest when I share His word, so I realised that night that I had to do something for Him. I was out of practice, I felt like a newbie getting to know Jesus for the first time even though I have been known Him since birth, (or at least that’s what I thought).

I started reading the bible every day and journaling my prayers which helped me a lot to get to a place where I could hear Him guiding me. After thinking about it a lot I decided to create a page on Instagram to share the word of God with others but also my experiences, and that’s when ‘A Wallflower Diaries’ came to life.

I consider myself a Wallflower because I have always been an introvert. I have always been in the sidelines, ignored or just trying to make myself disappear, but God has given me “a spotlight”.

I have always been afraid to share my message, so I created my page to finally open my pandora’s box and be a help to others.

I still get nervous sometimes because I fear that I might get judged by others, but I choose faith over fear every day, living one day at a time. You should too, choose faith in whatever you believe in over fear every day, it’s not easy but it’s worth the try.

I get so inspired everyday by other pages that also share the word in their own way and I have learned so much about my faith. I am Catholic and even though I had a lot of doubts in the past, I am here to stay. There’s so much to learn about the Catholic faith it amazes me.

No one is perfect, only God, but if we have been around for 2020 years with all its ups and downs, it must be worth something! 

This quarantine has helped me to become closer to God like never before: I have never been so consistent in my life.

I don’t have everything figured out now and sometimes the future still terrifies me, but I am learning to leave my worries in God hands and not check up on them.

Something that has helped me grow my faith is reading the word and listening to lectures.

We can’t believe in someone we don’t know so we have to get to know Him so we can learn to distinguish His voice when He calls.

Finding my purpose has been a race for 27 years now, and I’m probably still not clear about it. If I’m being honest, I don’t think anyone will ever be super sure about their purpose because we are always changing. I think, to get there you should take it one day at a time, acknowledge your feelings, your passion, if you feel like doing something DO IT! Don’t regret not doing it later.

Know yourself, embrace the parts of you that are not that bright, surround yourself with people that make you feel like sunshine, and not those that make you feel like you are hard to love. Learn to let go, don’t give in to shame; All those negative feelings come from the devil not from God. If you sin or make a mistake, acknowledge it, and keep going, God will never not want you back! 

After reading all of these you might be thinking, “easier said than done”, yes, yes, it is, but you’ll never learn to do it if you don’t try. It will be hard at first, like working out after 15 years of having a sedentary life, but if you believe you are worth it, WHICH YOU ARE, you have to trust, love and show yourself that you can create the life that you dream of and deserve.

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